We have watched the videos of the arrest of Freddie Gray,
the videographer of one, Kevin Moore, later arrested. We have seen the video of
the mother beating on her son to get him away from the protest. We have heard
Baltimore State’s Attorney Mosby’s announcement of the indictment of six police
officers. And more recently we hear the denials by Baltimore Fraternal Order of
Police of any wrong doing.
There are human values at work in these videoed incidents
viewed nationally and around the world. And perhaps we considered the first
response that came into our heads as we watched.
In the wake of the announcement of the indictment of 6
Baltimore police officers in the Freddie Gray case, the video of the mother
forcing her son to leave the demonstration has great positive value, once we
hear the interview of mother and son.
Toya Graham, having recently
lost her job, says she always tries to show her 16-year-old son, Michael
Singlton, what is right. She was seen on footage that went viral forcing him to
leave the area of the protests, which later turned violent. Her actions brought
debating commentary on the YouTube posting of the footage.
Whatever the opinion, the viewer hears in the interview that
human values were at play here, not just a knee-jerk reaction to participation
in the aftermath of the violence following the death of Freddie Gray.
We watch with relief as we witness the human values at play
in the announcement of indictment following the work of the office of
Baltimore’s States Attorney. The announcement yesterday by Baltimore City’s
States Attorney Marilyn J. Mosby's that Gray had
been illegally arrested and suffered a spinal injury while unrestrained in a
police transport wagon led to joyous outbursts in many parts of a city that has
been under heavy police and National Guard watch and a 10 p.m. curfew following
Monday's rioting.
The police union made public a letter to
States Attorney Mosby from Baltimore FOP’s president, Gene Ryan, requesting she
appoint an independent prosecutor.
Following the announcement of the
indictments, Ryan has decried the State’s Attorney actions are “an egregious
rush to judgment.”
And now the report that the arresting
officer, Lt. Brian Rice, has had mental health issues adds a new element to the
events surrounding Gray’s death. A Business
Insider article reports that “Rice, who initially
pursued Gray on a Baltimore street when Gray fled after Rice made eye
contact April 12th, declared three years ago that he ‘could not continue to go
on like this’ and threatened to commit an act that was censored in the public
version of a report obtained by the AP from the Carroll County, Maryland,
Sheriff's Office.”
Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/indicted-baltimore-police-officers-has-mental-health-issues-2015-5#ixzz3YzSstnnt
There are differing reactions to the videos
linked above. We view the video of the arrest of Freddie Gray in horror at the
treatment shown, and have deep pain in imagining what happened in that police
van as we here the detailed description of the indictment read by States
Attorney Mosby. We see mother and son, Toya
and Michael, with varied emotional response—from “You go, Girl!” and “That boy
needs to listen to his Mama” to “That kind of video gives ammunition to those who say we don’t know how
to act in public” and “He has a right to protest.”
In these human exchanges—Toya/Michael and
Mosby/Police Union—there are differing points of view working against one
another that, once .
What we are witnessing is not a Baltimore
thing. It’s an “us” thing. What we are judging as a Black-and-White thing is a
human thing.
In these incidents we are struck with our
own first reaction to what we see. Rush to judgment? Or perhaps what we have
here is a view of the facts with a need to look deeper into the national plague of racial prejudice.
